


Nightingale

by ScriveSpinster



Series: Urchins in the High Wilderness [1]
Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Skies
Genre: Family, Ficlet, Fix-It, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 12:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18810799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScriveSpinster/pseuds/ScriveSpinster
Summary: Two travelers rest for a while in a place of endings, beginnings, and second chances.





	Nightingale

**Author's Note:**

> The Valkyrie and the Shieldmaiden are both from the Fallen London Exceptional Story _Hojotoho!_ , though I don’t think this is hugely spoilery for anything except the Shieldmaiden’s identity.

At the edge of the Floating Market, where lamplight and darkness meet and meld, a woman and a man sit on a rickety wooden wall, watching the crowds and sharing a plate of spice-drenched market food between them. They seem in some ways to have little in common; she is peligin-eyed, with a fighter’s wiry strength, while he is thin and pale, fine-boned as a bird. She eats with gusto, and he sparingly, through from time to time she manages to badger him into trying a morsel of flaky pastry or sautéed mushroom. Still, there is a likeness to them, in straw-gold hair and sapphire eyes and the stubborn set of their features, strong enough to be blood.

The woman calls to a troop of urchins as they pass, and they call back, _Hojotoho_ , with gap-toothed smiles and broom-spears lifted to the sky. If they notice anything about who it is that might be visiting their city, they give no sign. If you ask, she’ll say she likes it better that way.

“I keep an eye out, when I can,” she says to her companion, who watches them disappear into the crowd with a far-off, pensive look. “Make sure they don’t run into trouble they can’t handle. But they do alright on their own.”

“Just like we used to,” he says, with the shadow of a smile, and she grins back, the scars on her face shifting like a map redrawn.

“Aye,” she says. “Just like.”

“The Nightingale, you said they called their home.”

“I didn’t name it that,” she says. “Neither did they. Still, if signs exist, I think it’s a good one.”

If signs exist, then Eleutheria is full of them, in the names of trains and the songs of urchins, the unlawful legends and the trill of a flute winding through the clamor of barter. Neither of them recognize the song, but both hum along, wincing at missed notes until it comes easy, and when it ends, memory sits lighter on them both.

“Here,” she says, shoving a paper cone of fried dough into his hands. “Finish that and come with me. I want to show you the marshes.”

She leaves him no time to protest, just hops off the wall and darts into the market like a child at play, though she stops at a crossroads corner, waiting for him to follow. 

He does, after a moment – but first he looks down at the bits of pastry she’s foisted off on him, hesitates, then tries one. Honey-drizzled, they are, and cinnamon-dusted, sweet without any trace of bitter. Another, he decides, won’t hurt. He’ll give the rest to the first urchin he passes on the way, and she won’t argue, though he knows she’ll want to. Then it’s off into the marshes, in search of adventure or some lost innocent in need of rescuing. The skies are full of both, she’s assured him, and if he’s lost time, there’s time enough to make it up.

He isn’t sure he believes it; not everything, it seems to him, can be made up or undone. But there’s time enough to grab a lantern and follow his sister into the mists, and future enough to change. 

Side by side, they leave Achlys town behind, ready to brave the dark together.


End file.
